Welcome to Dad’s Recipe Box. Family favorites, tools & tips, news from the food system, dad jokes. Fun and info for home cookers of every age.
Grandma’s Irish Cake
My Irish grandmother, Annie Allen, arrived at Ellis Island in 1909, a twenty-one-year-old with two little boys—my father (4) and his little brother Sam (2), in tow. I can’t imagine. She joined her husband Bill, who’d come ahead two years earlier to work and save money for her passage. Bill had never met his son…
Dad Meets AI
Have been wondering about AI and cooking. When and how is it helpful to use AI for writing a food blog? Walked into the kitchen the other day and much to my surprise… Dad: “Hi AI, what’s happening?” AI: “Hi Dad! I have all kinds of ideas for what you can blog about. Where would…
Friendsgiving
What a great time when you’re a 20- or-30-something and you get together with work buddies or college buddies or any buddies for a Thanksgiving potluck. Chances are your people are from different places with different traditions and favorite recipes for stuffing, sides, or desserts. Everyone pitches in. Hats off to my friend Dave and…
Pasta sauce
Hey, Dad really likes pasta with sauce…or without sauce, actually. I could eat it evey day probably. But then…you get it.
Sugar is sweet — and so is sugar.
Sugar is sweet, but there so many sugars to choose from. I have a love-hate-2nd chance relationship with sugar. I don’t expect ever to embrace refined white sugar again, but there are several actual sugar and non-sugar sweeteners that pass muster for my various purposes. This is important to work out for yourself, as there…
Dad’s Ragu
Just about everyone (We have a notable exception in our family.) likes pasta sauce with meat and tomato. I love it. I’ve made it many times and tried various recipes, mostly called ragu or Bolognese. Ragu in Italian means tasty or savory, or it refers to the meaty, tomatoey, stewy dish itself. It (the word…
Follow that salmon!
Salmon have been escaping from some saltwater open-net aquaculture sites at an alarming rate, according to Melissa Clark in the New York Times article, The Salmon on Your Plate Has a Troubling Cost. That’s right. In the worst cases, large numbers of escaping salmon have a devastating effect on native species. Not good. But there’s…
Meals in the mail
I figured it was about time to talk about meal kit plans. We have tried several. And have canceled them all after a fair trial. I suppose this sounds like I’m condemning them, but I’m not. It’s just that after a while, it’s time to try something new. My favorites are ButcherBox.com and WildGrain.com. These…
Summer peach cobbler
I’ve always loved a fresh-fruit summer cobbler, even when called a buckle, crumble, crisp, Betty, or slump(!), but thought of them as a lot of work—or at least exceeding my “too much work” threshold—to be thought of as “convenient” or “fast.” No longer. This recipe is proving to be pretty fast, flexible (We are nothing…
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